In a new post at Minding the Campus, Mark Bauerlein points out the hypocritical lack of diversity at the top levels of higher education.

President Mills, It’s Time to Resign

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education has a story on diversity in higher education that begins, “Despite decades of antidiscrimination policies and affirmations of equality, there’s still little racial and ethnic diversity at the top at many of the colleges.”

And last year, as legal challenges to affirmative action were building, the Board of Directors of the American Council on Education issued a firm statement entitled “On the Importance of Diversity in Higher Education” that justifies affirmative action on the grounds that it “enriches the educational experience” and “challenges stereotyped preconceptions” before concluding, “the diversity we seek and the future of the nation do require that colleges and universities continue to be able to reach out and make a conscious effort to build healthy and diverse learning environments that are appropriate for their missions.”

A few months earlier, President Barry Mills of Bowdoin College issued a statement on liberal education that included the following paragraph:

As for affirmative action, my own view is that this is a necessary practice that has opened the doors of educational opportunity to many who never dreamed of being able to attend college–folks representing part of “the 99%” in America who are looking to better their lives and the lives of their families. I will be writing more over the coming months on the importance of considering race and economic means in the admissions process.

Now, there are factual objections to each of these statements.  The Chronicle story, for instance, opens with the assertion that “The Ivy League’s senior leadership is overwhelmingly white and heavily male,” but only a few sentences later notes that in executive, administrative, and managerial positions, women hold “a majority of such jobs at five of the eight Ivies” (five of the eight Ivies have female presidents, too).